 Hussain Fakhruddin
CEO, Teknowledge LLC
Hussain Fakhruddin helps convert ideas into building next generation apps around smart-phones, ta...
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 Here are some clearly visible problems with Android and why it's not still the best in the market. 1. No Liability. Google doesn't want to take responsibility of filtering quality apps. As you read this, there are 300k apps in iTunes, 250k+ on Android, 50-80k on Blackberry and so on. None of the Android developers will disagree with me if I say that 80% of the Android apps are useless. Where is the Quality? People launch apps just to promote their own product?! Hello! There is something called as HTML 5 and Mobile Web for that! But why would Google care for an orphan? 2. Lack of Interest: I have seen the forums. There are teams who answer questions related to problems but the entire thing is so slow and there is no fun involved. Developers are not excited about asking questions for the appstore. 3. Google Market: The market is a big thumb down. I don't like it at all. Let us take some examples: A. Android Publisher Accounts has Big Problems: There's always some maintenance or upgrades or something or the other not working. Especially in last couple of months this has increased. B. The Publisher Account is a ONE MAN ARMY: Let's say you have a team, OH NO, Market doesn't allow teaming concepts. It's linked to your primary account. How on earth Google assumes the app publishers will hand over their primary account password to the developers to upload and maintain the apps? Companies launch 2-3 apps weekly and it's a big problem for us to convince clients to send their Google Password. This is surely not expected out of Google. To top it, our clients think we do not know our stuff! C. Merchant Accounts: Well Google, Did you know how many Android developers are there in India? Atleast far more than what you think. For those of you who didn't know this. Google doesn't allow Paid apps in India and many other countries. Such a pity! D. Ratings/ Comments: People keep commenting in and out. Negative comments on competitor products. A good product turns evil! One cannot even mark a comment as SPAM! E. Free Apps to Paid Apps Switching Not Possible: What if I want to offer my App free for a few days during holiday season? What if I want to run a promotion campaign? F. Copy Protection: Google missed out the long term thinking here. They have this feature of now allowing the apps to move from internal memory to SDCard. It was made to ensure that apps aren't copied. Hey Google, didn't you know ROOTed devices does that anyway. Obviously if someone wants to copy will copy it anyhow! But look at the negative side? There are devices with just 128MB of internal memory. How do you expect these devices to run apps out of internal memory? G. No limelight for New Apps: Google android store has become a place where there is no room for fresh apps. Whenever you open the Google Market, you'll see top free/top paid etc and on the last is new releases. This is not the case with Apple iOS. Apple ensures that new apps do come on limelight by presenting the user with this screen first. As a result of this silly thing which Google fails to understand, the top apps keep topping all the time and there is very less scope for new apps to come on limelight. I. Google doesn't Earn from Apps: They earn from selling support for their Android OS. There are 100s of manufacturers today who go to google for customizing their OS in the way they like it. Samsung and HTC are top ones. Google makes good money with this and they're just not bothered about retail consumer markets. Experts on Mobile
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